Friday, June 3, 2011

Honeycomb Art & Fingerprint Bees

After learning about Bees I must say I feel a certain kinship to the female worker bees - they are a lot like us Mamas! :)

2 Great Books we read:

Are You a Bee? (Backyard Books) by Judy Allen - I have really been enjoying this entire series about insects. They have one for the butterfly, bee, ant, spider, grasshopper, ladybug and dragonfly. The book gives many facts in a fun kid friendly way. If you have not read them - I highly recommend them. A great way to introduce scientific facts via storytelling.

In the Trees, Honey Bees! by Lori Mortensen - full of wonderful facts and amazing illustrations this was probably my favorite book of the week! I learned so much from it and the girls were enthralled with the full page, colorful llustrations. A gem of a book.

After looking at some books with pictures of beehives and honeycomb I let the girls use our pattern blocks to make a beehive. This was a great way to introduce the concept of what I wanted them to do for our craft.

1. Glue honeycomb cereal onto paper to make a beehive. I started by telling the Lil Divas they would be desigining their own beehive using the honeycomb cereal.
They took a moment to think about their design and then the fun began.

The Oldest Diva went to work making a beehive shape

The Littlest Diva did a bit more snacking than gluing

but she eventually got into the project too

Here is the Oldest Diva's design:

and the Littlest Diva's design:

Now to add some honeybees!

2. Dip thumb into yellow paint and add to paper wherever they would like a bee. I started by having them pick the number of bees they wanted on their picture. They each chose their age for their number so we had 4 & 5 bees to make.

3. Then I used their pointer finger to make the head by dipping it in black paint and pressing on top of the yellow thumbprint body.

Here is what they looked like after the fingerprinting:

4. Let the paint dry and then use your black marker to add stripes, wings and antennas (see below)

Always love new crafts!! Will be trying this one out and linking back to you :)

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Name's April, 23, 2 kids, and a hubby- a dog and a cat. I'm about to start working again for the first time in over 2 years, unpaid, but it's going to be awesome. My life is crazy and chaotic, and so is my blog- hope you enjoy!! :)

Love your Bee craft - what a fantastic idea! I'm not sure we have that brand of cereal here in Australia, but will now have to keep an eye out for it! The books look lovely - more to add to our ever growing bee book collection!

I love that you're doing these projects. I am bookmarking them for rainy days, that is if it ever rains here again. Lol. Or maybe days when it is just too hot out. It is only the beginning of June and we are already almost up to 100 degrees every day here in the south. So hot. Thanks.

I've done something like this only I used a simple printed pattern of a bee hive and had them fill in with the Honeycomb. I also used striped craft chenille wire and twisted small pieces into a sorta-like bee shape!